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• In spite of such tremendous variation in scale and physiology, the organismal metabolic rate (P; defined as the heat produced by the organism per unit time measured in Watts, which is related to the rate of oxygen consumption (McDonald, 2002)) nevertheless follows a general scaling relationship with body mass (M)
• This implies that the specific metabolic rate (P/M) decreases as body mass increases, which is commonly interpreted as reflecting a size-dependent decrease of cellular metabolic rates.
• he physiological basis of Kleiber’s law remains under intense debate.
• Our analysis of the organismal energy balance reveals that the size-dependent decrease in the specific metabolic rate does not reflect a decrease in the metabolic rate per cell, but instead an increase in the average mass per cell.
• automated counting of fluorescently stained nuclei

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